Environmental Health Perspectives 105, Supplement 6, December 1997

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Risk Estimation for Badge-monitored Radiation Workers

Alice Stewart

Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom

Abstract
In estimating the cancer mortality risk for radiation workers it is conventional to use data obtained from the populations exposed to radiation as a result of the atomic bomb blast in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This A-bomb experience resulted in relatively high doses of radiation and short periods of exposure. The availability of systematic analyses of the mortality of workers at the Hanford plant (Washington state) provides a more realistic basis for individual risk estimates. We present the data for three functions that in combination provide useful guidelines for occupational cancer mortality risk. These functions are a relationship between age at exposure, latency between exposure and death, and a dose-response function. Although other estimates of such functions are possible using different populations and assumptions, we offer these functions as guidelines for individual cancer risk evaluation based on our analyses of the Hanford data. -- Environ Health Perspect 105(Suppl 6):1603-1606 (1997)

Key words: radiation carcinogenesis, dose-response relationships, occupational cancer, latency analysis

This paper is based on a presentation at the International Conference on Radiation and Health held 3-7 November 1996 in Beer Sheva, Israel. Abstracts of these papers were previously published in Public Health Reviews 24(3-4):205-431 (1996). Manuscript received at EHP 18 August 1997; accepted 22 September 1997.

Address correspondence to Dr. A.M. Stewart, Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, University of Birmingham Medical School, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom. Telephone: 44 121 414 3367. Fax: 44 121 414 3630. E-mail: a.walker@bham.ac.uk

Abbreviations used: ICRP, International Commission for Radiation Protection; MSK, a set of articles by Mancuso, Stewart, and Kneale (see references); RR, relative risk.

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